In the Dead of Night
by lordofthesissies
Summary: At eight years old, Hermione sees her parents for the last time. At thirteen years old, she kills for the first time. At sixteen years old, she wages a moral war. And at eighteen, she becomes consumed with one thought; the blood of the masked man's fear-stricken eyes when she finally kills him.
1. Chapter 1

The girl peered through the thin, tall grasses before her. She was crouched shin-to-thigh and flat-footed, her heels grounded in the dry dirt below. In the twenty minutes she'd waited, they'd begun to burn against the leather of her shoes and her soles, weighed by her heavy feet, had sunken deep into the mud.

In the moment, everything seemed to incrementally loosen at the seams. The only thing evident to the girl was simply that she wasn't in control of the situation. And the only thing she could very well expect was the unexpected, a fearful notion only compounded by the ruthlessness of the _machines_ she'd spent more than half her youth fighting against. She couldn't trust in reason. Killing was the high they craved, and they stopped at nothing short of the direct threat of death to get their daily fix.

The girl shut her eyes, opening her mind to the images of their banging, slashing, and pulverizing.

She thought of how they murdered as if addicted to the blood, the fear in the eyes of the exterminated, and the emptiness of the scream at the end. For years, she had watched and still nothing had changed. In the way they stepped and sliced existed a mindless mindfulness. On one hand, they jumped from one target to another, killing whoever crossed their path, but on the other, it was as if they were timed, bound to the clock, each movement on a tick—the flying punch at 5 sharp and the swinging elbow 5 seconds after.

As much as the girl hated them, she was intrigued. Their primal need to kill like a junkie doped on heroin was so completely contradictory to the way she was raised—a system of thinking that believed everyone should resist the temptation seen as ungodly, and even if it weren't, at the very least, it was said to be _unnatural_. Yet all the girl saw in the killers was _natural_ instinct. They were selfish and greedy. They used the world as they pleased.

Though the act of killing was, by design, life-denying, in the killers she saw life-affirming beings. They created the world as they wanted. They did as they saw fit. They lived without pretenses.

The contradiction confused Hermione. Somewhere along the way she'd started killing. And, she felt the high too. She loved how the blood rushed during every kill, churning and pumping. The feeling excited her. Her eyes would widen. Her back would relax. She'd pummel forward and flail her arms in perfect misdirection. She craved a thick neck in her grasp, even more addicted to the way it'd gasp for the air she wouldn't allow.

At first, she killed just the one until another was added to his solitary coffin, and then a few more, the death count rising everyday. There'd been a point when she knew how many she'd taken. Now, she couldn't ballpark the number.

Sometimes, the girl wondered if she'd transformed into the enemy. But she always shook her head "no" in reply. She at least had a moral grounding they lacked. She was working toward something. Even if she wasn't certain what that something was, she had a _something_ and ultimately that was all that mattered.

When she saw the red eyes of the enemy, drunk off the blood it spilled, they morphed into the emotion-filled eyes of the victims. Their faces flashed in front of her. Their smiles. The crinkles in their eyes. And then, the fear and the horror that contorted the bliss of their laughter.

She killed for the victims.

Always she was purposeful despite the squirm of her stomach, the clench of her teeth, and the stench of her vomit.

So as the pain in her heels crept to her calves, stinging at her bum, the girl ruminated on reason, _her_ reason. If she forgot or worse, began to find it senseless, she knew she'd already lost to the pain.

The girl focused on her breathing as her eyes scanned the darkness around her, lit only by the streetlamp about three hundred feet away. A bunch of gnats accumulated near her, settling in the halo of hair that had escaped her tightly bound ponytail. She wanted to swat them from her cheeks, but resisted, her eyes darting in the darkness, searching.

Her trained ears perked at the sound of restless noises. She held her breath, her ears straining to stay tuned to the new development. Ninety seconds had passed when she finally exhaled a softly and carefully breath at the sound of more distinct ruffling, closer than the noises she'd heard prior.

Simultaneous to her breath, her heartbeat quickened, eyes widened, and calf muscles flexed. She couldn't see the informant of the ruffling. The anxiety that had built in the minutes before threatened to show on her body until at last she got clues.

Whispers.

With her upper-body stock-still, she pried her foot from the mud, dismissing the shot of pain that traveled down the length of her back. Slowly, she dragged one foot ahead of the other toward the voices, her left ear on the metaphorical look out.

She approached a clearing. If she didn't cross it, she'd need to inch along the vegetation of the outskirts, a length nearly two times as long and almost as ill-concealed. As the clock kept on with its tragic tick, she used her hands to measure the distance between her front and back foot, estimating how many steps she'd need to get across the clearing. She leaned forward, putting her hands on the dirt and setting herself as if she were a sprinter. She assessed the environment again, eyes on the lookout again. Satisfied, she targeted an area of tall grasses on the other end of the clearing and swiftly ran, her chest low. On reaching the grasses, she slid into them, ignoring the way they rubbed her skin. The quick exhales of her pumping chest quieted.

As the girl settled in the grass, she saw a light looming over her. She maneuvered in a way such that she was flat on the ground and diagonal to the trees instead of head on, a position where she could see the shadows of figures.

"Malfoy, get over here," a man said loudly.

The girl jolted.

 _"Hermione, get over here," Mrs. Granger, the normally soft-spoken woman, screeched at her daughter, who was playing on the floor with a book she had borrowed from her primary school's library._

 _"One sec, Mummy," Hermione replied mechanically without looking from her book. "I'm almost finished."_

 _Mrs. Granger rubbed her forehead to get rid of some non-existent sweat. She looked at her daughter, foot tapping. "Hermione, I said right now."_

 _As Mrs. Granger waited for Hermione to get up, the girl continued on with her reading. Nervous now, Mrs. Granger snatched the book from her daughter, throwing it to the other end of the floor._

 _She then grabbed Hermione's arm and took her to the door where Mr. Granger had a couple overstuffed suitcases packed._

 _Immediately, Hermione began screaming for her book, annoyed at the gall of her mother. Meanwhile, Mrs. Granger placed her hand on her daughter's mouth to suppress the girl's screams._

 _"Hermione, you need to be very quiet. You, your mum, and I… we're taking a trip," Mr. Granger said._

 _"But I don't want to go on a trip. I want my book," Hermione answered, her lower lip jutted out as she turned her head in her mother's arms waving to the book carelessly left open on the far end of the living room floor with her hand._

 _"When we get to our destination, I'll get you all the books you want." Mr. Granger said softly, hoping to pacify his stubborn daughter._

 _"But I want that book," Hermione remarked, her upset veneer beginning to crack._

 _"Well, we can get that book too," Mr. Granger smiled. Hermione smiled back at him, a toothy grin spreading her cheeks._

 _Mrs. Granger took a lollipop out of her pocket, which Hermione eyed with delight. Her dentist parents never let her eat candy._

 _"Is that strawberry?" Hermione squealed._

 _Mrs. Granger sighed, "Yes, it's strawberry."_

 _She placed Hermione on the ground, opening the wrap of the candy for her before handing the lollipop to Hermione, who shoved it in her mouth greedily, smacking her lips with enthusiasm._

 _"Now be a good girl for your mummy," Mr. Granger patted Hermione's head. Hermione just smiled again, leaning into his touch and curling her ear into the tough flesh of his palm._

 _Hermione went to sit on the stairs by the door, tuning out her parents, who talked in whispers beside her. She didn't know what was going on. Nonetheless, she was content with her candy, smacking away until she noticed a weirdness in the lighting of the curtain that covered the narrow window next to the door. The normally cream curtain had changed to a canvas of different colors: blues, greens, and purples. It looked like an Impressionist painting except that the colors kept changing as if they were colorful waves. Hermione stood from the step where she sat and looked more closely at the curtain. She pushed it aside, and gasped._

 _Her parents stopped their silent bickering to look at their daughter, immediately running to her. Her mother looked horrified and Hermione didn't know why. She knew her mother was a nervous person, but she hadn't seen her ever look this way. The fear in her mother's eyes scared Hermione. Before she could think more about what had happened, her father had swept her in his arms, bounding the stairs in twos._

 _"Hermione, listen to me. Just listen," Mr. Granger kissed the ear of his daughter with each word._

 _"You are going to wait right here, and you are not to get out until either Daddy or Mummy return."_

 _Hermione wanted to protest, but her father had the look that meant there wasn't room for discussion. He set her down and went to open a door beneath the carpet in her parent's room which she hadn't known existed._

 _"You understand, my darling?" He looked straight into her eyes, a tear threatening to break from his waterline._

 _"You understand?" He repeated, the tremor apparent. He knelt before Hermione, asking with his dark eyes that she obey._

 _Hermione could only nod as she walked forward, clinging to her father._

 _Mr. Granger returned the hug, rubbing Hermione's back in soft circles as he carried her into the small room below the floorboard, the dark interior of the room swallowing Hermione._


	2. Chapter 2

Malfoy, get over here," a man said loudly. The girl jolted.

"God, why can't you pick up your feet," the man exhaled. "If you can't keep up I will drop you one of these days."

"I'm not the one who's following dumb leads all the time. What are we gonna find in no man's land..." the other man, Malfoy Hermione assumed, trailed off. She suppressed a grin as she felt her left cheek involuntarily lifting at the man's whining.

" _Dumb_ leads as you call them are the only thing keeping us, or should I say _me_ ahead. You seem to be content to sit on your bum all day. If it weren't for your particular usefulness, you'd be long dead."

"As if. I don't need you to babysit me. I'd probably get farther on my—." The whiny man was cut off.

Hermione couldn't see what had happened. She shifted from her spot, trying to get a better angle as she toyed with the grasses to get the view she needed to understand what they were saying. Their voices were so low that she really needed to get eyes on their lips, or at the very least, their bodies.

After a fair amount of movement on her part, Hermione knew she needed to get closer. Lifting on her the balls of her feet, she emerged from the lower ground she'd taken and quickly scanned the foreground. She noted a small ditch and another grass-filled area similar to the one she currently occupied. The ditch, though convenient in its closeness could be easily exposed. It'd be too hard for Hermione to get the traction to run if need be from the way the ditch dipped. The grasses however were only just slightly closer to the men than where she was now.

She feared making the switch there wouldn't be worth the cost.

Following her instincts, she rolled her ankles and scurried to the ditch, ears open as she watched the trees. Coming up to the ditch, she propped herself on the sides, ensuring that she wouldn't fall completely in. Her arms were stretched full length to cover the diameter of the opening, and her knees were bent as if she were balancing two perpendicular ladders.

"The only thing you're good for is your blood. The sooner you understand that, the better."

"And what makes you so special?"

Hermione could now see the back of one of the men as he approached the end of the group of trees. She lowered herself into the ditch by a couple inches.

"Sometimes it's frustrating knowing that I'll never find a worthy adversary to match me so I must resign myself to abhorrent creatures such as yourself." The man ignored Malfoy's question.

Hermione couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic, but the question was forgotten when he turned.

Hermione was taken aback. The man was tall, very tall. He wasn't particularly built, but he certainly wasn't scrawny. His eyes were dark, his hair wavy and lips the deep red that she despised. Soon after, the whiny man stumbled out falling to his knees after he'd tripped on some rock. He looked as petulant as he sounded with too blonde hair that looked dyed, blue eyes, and aristocratic features fitting of his oozing entitlement.

"I'll always be worth more than you filthy piece of scum. You're a bastard!" the blonde man sneered, nearly shouting at the back of the dark man's head.

The irony wasn't lost on Hermione as she watched the blonde man try to stand as the taller looked down on him.

If Malfoy had hoped to get a reaction from the taller man, he didn't. Hermione, however, saw the way the taller man's eyes tensed and shoulders moved ever so slightly.

"We're setting up camp here for the night," the taller man raised an eyebrow at the blonde. "You know the drill."

"But Tom," Malfoy whined again.

"What is it? You aren't up to the task?"

"I always do it."

" _Obviously_. It's the only thing you can do," the taller man, _Tom_ apparently, rolled his eyes. "Get moving."

Malfoy huffed but did as he was asked, starting to pick up medium-sized sticks as he walked back into the trees.

When Hermione looked back from Malfoy to Tom, she could no longer find the taller man. He had disappeared. Her breath picked up. She couldn't stay in the ditch if she didn't know where he was. Scanning 360 degrees, she couldn't get any sign of movement from the man, so she pushed on the ground to get out of the ditch, her chest heaving as she rolled on her stomach. Immediately, Hermione contorted to a crouch, her hand resting on a log. From there, she ran behind a tree. The tree wasn't skinny but not nearly thick enough for sufficient protection so she placed her left foot on one of the roots, and propelled her body upward, trying to grip onto any juts in the tree to climb into the canopy. There were few branches, and as Hermione kept climbing, she couldn't find any worthwhile rut to grab. She shifted her body weight to her left side keeping her hands to the right so she might get enough air to swing to a branch above her which was just out of arm's length. She moved her body back and forth several times, trying to get a feel for what she was about to attempt.

Satisfied, Hermione removed her hands from the tree, launching herself to the branch, but as her arms had risen to grab the branch, her finger tips only brushed the bottom. On her way down, she managed to grab another branch below, but she feared her position had already been compromised. She swung on the branch, as if on the monkey bars, ensuring that her hold was indeed tight.

However, as soon as she'd secured her position, she felt two hands grab hold of both her ankles, and the next thing she knew, Hermione was in the blonde man's arms.

"Well, look at you," he said. "What is a girl like you doing around these parts?" The shock evident in the man's expression.

Hermione couldn't help but be relieved to know the man was this man rather than the other. He was carrying her like a baby, leaving her arms and legs pretty free. She reached into her deep pocket for her knife, sliding the blade across her thumb before covertly bringing it out behind her back. She couldn't cut his pretty face, but it'd be easy to get his leg. She glanced down at the point of contact of their bodies, estimating where she'd need to strike to immobilize him.

Then, Hermione flipped out of his arms, coming down to her knees where he couldn't see her, and spun her left leg around to sweep his shins. She took the knife behind her back and struck at the tender flesh just below his groin.

She heard the blonde man howl, but didn't look back. She just kept running.

 _Hermione just kept running. She couldn't let them get to her. She'd managed to stay hidden this long. She wouldn't succumb now. She felt the supplies on her back start to weigh on her. They were slowing her down, but among them was the only food she had—food she might not see for days on end if she got rid of it now._

 _She looked behind her. They were gaining on her. Forced to let go of everything she'd spent the last weeks working for, she tossed her supplies off her shoulder, but the relief wasn't as satisfying as she hoped. Still, they gained on her. There was simply no way her little feet could outrun them._

 _In the next minutes, she was dragged to the ground. The figures loomed on top of her. Her vision blurred. The pain that she'd forgotten about when she was running returned to her. The sting of her palms. The way her feet chafed against her shoes. The ache in her head._

" _We aren't supposed to kill her."_

 _Hermione could hear the conversation, but her eyes were too tired to look at them._

" _Why?"_

" _The Master wants her for something."_

" _What could he possibly want her for? She looks barely thirteen."_

" _I don't know. I just follow the orders."_

" _Okay, well, when is he coming?"_

" _I don't know. I just know she's supposed to be suitably prepared. He wants her washed and dressed. Ready, he said."_

" _All right."_

" _Yeah, let's get her to a house."_

 _Hermione heard the slicing. She felt the screams resound in her body. And she saw the blood-stained floors._

 _She was dragged to the bath. The water was cold. She resented the hands on her body as they scrubbed the filth from her skin. She even resented the ugly yellow dress she'd been given to wear._

 _Most of all though, she resented him. The way he felt entitled to her body. The way he pressed his cold hand to her cheek. The way he softly_ _kissed her eyelids as if he were actually capable of affection._

 _That night as she lay in bed beside the Master who was snoring, Hermione tied his hands and feet to the four bedposts with four large sheets she'd found in the bedroom closet. Then, she tiptoed to the kitchen, taking a steak knife from the dish washer and crept back to the room. She crawled on top of the Master, covering the Master's mouth with her hand as she stabbed._

 _That night, she left, leaving the knife in the Master's heart. As she walked, for the first time since her parents left, Hermione cried._


End file.
